DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMAL LIFE. 357 



tions have been made at very short intervals. For instance, 

 in 1829, Minding computed that the globe contained 1230 

 species of mammals. In 1832, Charles Bonaparte reduced 

 the total to 1149. Oken estimates it at 1500; and this last 

 figure would seem to be the most probable. 



Nothing is more curious than the distribution of these 1500 

 species of mammals, according to the different regions and 

 climates of the globe. 



Man, according to the best-considered data of science, 

 forms a single family, a single genus, a single species. He 

 alone possesses the power of adapting himself to every climate, 

 and of taking possession of countries the most widely opposite 

 in character. We find him among the snows of the North 

 Pole ; we find him under the blazing sun of the Tropics. We 

 find him in the palm-fringed islands of Southern Seas, and in 

 the barren burning waste of the inhospitable Sahara. Con- 

 sidered as an animal who feeds and reproduces himself, he 

 forms alone the order of Bimana ; so named in opposition to 

 the Quadrumana, or apes, who make use of their fore-feet as 

 we do of our two hands. Deprive man of his progressive and 

 transmissible intellect of those mysterious powers which we 

 call the mind and the soul and he would become at once 

 the most useless and the most wretched member of the animal 

 world. 



The warm regions of the old and new continents are the 

 true home and haunt of the apes. They are not sufficiently 

 developed to be able to frequent the temperate or frigid zone. 

 In our European menageries the specimens nearly all die of 



